State of Mind

This game heavily reminds me of former Playstation exclusives by Quantic Dream, Beyond: Two Souls, Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human. It is a very narrative driven game, or putting it very bluntly, a long cutscene with tons of conversations sparsely sprinkled with bouts of player interactivity. This does not make it a bad game. It makes it a casual, sometimes interactive walk and an acquired taste. Or at least a very polarizing game. I'm leaning towards the recommended side.
It's a cyberpunk thriller set in 2084 about transhumanism and everything that it brings. Think Blade Runner, old and new mixed with a few more things, The Matrix, I,Robot and a few more. I even got a hint of Otherland: City of Golden Shadow by Tad Williams. The game's world building is excellent, bringing two immersive locations, dystopian Berlin and weirdly utopian City5, to life. The minimal, polygonal visuals and the overall aesthetics are very stylish and do not break the immersion of the game's weighty story. The game's soundtrack is also very good, further enhancing the joy of wandering around the locations.
The story itself is good, characters are well developed and voice acting is well done. The pacing could have been better. Sometimes it drags on too long and sometimes it dumps a giant exposition bucket with 15 facts at once on your head. But, it's just a minor gripe.
Gameplay is rather linear with not much player choice, most of the story is set no matter what you answer. There are lots of things to read and examine, filling out the world, but not much of it is actually useful in the context of progressing. Since the game is the story, I won't mention anything about it. Just know it's worth going through it at least once. It is an adventure game in a sense, but there are no actual puzzles or inventory use. What little of it there is, is very minimal and not challenging in any way.
One real issue I have is the very weird and wonky movement, like they were trying to somehow simulate the occasional jerkiness of people's movements, but it didn't translate into the game very well. It takes getting used to.
The game played smoothly and I've had no technical difficulties or crashes. Only once did the game bug out. When I was trying to take a screenshot, I wanted to position myself to get another character's face into the frame and that character moved, getting me stuck in place. Restarting the checkpoint solved the problem.
If you've played any Quantic Dream games, Indigo Prophecy was on the PC ages ago, or anything of theirs on the Playstation (or the Epic Store now), you'll probably like this game. For anyone else and fans of cyberpunk/sf, the world, story and characters deserve to be seen and heard at least once. The asking price is a bit of an issue for a game like this, but if you can get it on sale, you'll be more than satisfied.
Take a peek inside the newly opened Cabinet of Curiosities if you like to walk off the beaten path and only sometimes return to the main roads. You might find something worth exploring. And if you do, thank you for the visit.
Follow the Average Achievement Hunter Curator for reviews and useful information on Steam achievements: I finished the game with 21/34 achievements. There are lots of missable and limited achievements, but all of them can be done by loading checkpoints and chapters. The game does a good job autosaving and only two achievements require replaying larger bits of the game. None of the achievements are difficult and usually require making different choices in the playthrough.

Life feels like shit
State of Mind is a narrative game by Daedalic with a pretty good story, lacking graphics and great atmopshere.
The game starts slow and feels meh at the start, but later it sucks you in with its world and story. It's a bit cliché story but it's good in the end. The character named Richard wakes up from a car crash and after some time he realizes something isn not right and tries to find what really happened to him.
This game would've been a great rpg game. As a narrative game it's above average, but not amazing. It tackles too many topics and doesn't go deep enough into any of them. If this would be a lengthy rpg game it would be able to do that and tell an amazing story. There's a lot of different topics to explore in this game, like AI and all the sci-fi stuff, love, relationships, family, poverty, human values, what is life, but you just get a glimpse at all these topics. You want to know more about some characters but you can't. The only topic explored in the game which was enough was about prostitution, that scene hits you hard and there's nothing more to tell, plain and simple.
The world is extremely small, there are small areas and your apartment where you run around, but they feel good and are nicely done overall.
This is mainly a narrative game and all those puzzle sections near the end seems out of place. They're not needed in narrative games, especially when they're so cheap that it feels they came right from a free mobile game. Although i'm a fan of point&click games I never liked Daedalic point&click games, but I absolutely love that they're leaning more towards narrative games lately, Pillars of the Eart being a masterpiece. I hope they'll keep going this path.
I didn't get what's the point of choices you make at the end of the game. The ending is exactly the same whatever you choose. I mean at least put some effort into the ending scene.
I think the reason for all these lacking things is that this game had a very small budget and just couldn't fit everything into one game sadly.
Controls most of the time are painful, you often bump into objects, walls or just can't run through the doorway. These were one of weirdest controls i've ever experienced, it's just wonky af.
Graphically the game looks good, very clean aesthetically. But character models are ugly. I don't think is the right way to go. Again I think this was done because they had a small budget, but still it's disappointing. Characters also don't have any emotions or lip syncing, just dead faces speaking.
Voice acting is decent. You'll certainly know the main character's voice. But some other characters are really lacking, especially the kid, I don't know if it's just me, but his voice felt really bad and unnatural.
So this is another game with an amazing idea which ended being just above average because no one fucking cares to finance these great ideas. Publishers rather finance shallow ubis***, ea and repetitive yearly copy paste multiplayer games. It's a sad world we live in.
If you like narrative games, cyberpunk, sci-fi and good stories then buy this game. It's still an enjoyable ride even with all its flaws.
Pros
Good story
Nice atmosphere
Tries to explore various topics
Graphically everything beside characters looks good
Cons
Annoying controls
Characters are lifeless
You want to know much more than game tells you
Unnecessary puzzle sections
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Daedalic
They are a Hamburg-based video game developer studio who have been active for almost 15 years. Their point-and-click adventure games, such as the Deponia series, are well-known by many. I'm looking forward to their Gollum game (slated for next year) which is probably a big step for such a studio. State of Mind is their first product I laid my hands on just recently.
Story
Welcome to 2048 Berlin! A world increasingly populated by machines; machines that help us in our everyday lives including android assistants that can serve as tutors or be the maid in a household. Not for Richard Nolan, though, our protagonist and journalist who despises all. Following a car accident (shown in the intro) and the tutorial level in the hospital Richard returns home only to find it empty without his wife and kid. Much to this annoyance the family now has its own android. Disregarding anything the robot says Richard sets out to find his loves ones.
Cyberpunk
The setting is great! I love the genre and it reminded me of Deus Ex a couple of times. You know, a world with some great technological inventions, yet, it isn't as utopistic as one would believe. Fans of the Witcher series will immediately accept Richard as he is voiced by none other but Doug Cockle, our very own Geralt of Rivia.
Later on we are introduced to Adam Nolan. His apartment is elsewhere but its layout is exactly the same as that of Richard. The question is why. He has his child with him but he needs to be taken to the hospital regularly and his wife is also absent due to work. What is shown as dark and foreboding in Richard's world it is perfectly paralleled by Adam's location: the colours are vivid and everybody seems to be happy. Even the office buildings (their place of work) seem to oppose one another: while Richard is given the sack Adam receives a promotion (yet, upon entry he doesn't even know the girl's name who has just given him a compliment).
Gameplay
We control Richard and Adam from the 3rd person in an extremely linear way. While almost everything in the world can be scanned and interacted with to a certain degree it is really just one option we have to make the story progress. There are several locations but these are relatively small and there are many we return to. Things get a little bit more interesting when the two protagonists meet and the holo pin board in their study allows us to switch between them on the go.
There is no combat or QTE sequence here. It is impossible to fail the game and in case you got stuck in a new location remember to go through your contacts as you might have missed a message or a call from someone. I found the low-poly art very appealing and making progress throughout the chapters felt like watching a TV series. Too bad that I binge-watched it - the writing is not the strongest side of the game and as it slows down after a couple of chapters you have to have patience to get that extra momentum to be able to proceed.
Summary
State of Mind is a good game. Not a great one but an interesting one indeed. Its narrative is somewhat mediocre but the setting (and the music!) is superb. We also get two very satisfying endings. Overall, a walkthrough takes roughly 9 hours to complete which is decent. I didn't feel like jumping in once more, though, so for the missing 'cheevos I went with the chapter selection.

A decent story, if you have the patience for it. It takes more than the first "chapter" to hook you in, and while most dialog can be skipped, none of the cut-scenes can. On top of that, movement feels laggy and awkward. The mini-games/puzzles were more annoying than adding anything of value.
It is rare I could see myself preferring a movie more than a game, but I think this might be one of those cases. That said, the story is enjoyable enough that it just passes the "recommended" threshold.
Additional Details

Operating System
Ubuntu Linux 18.04 x64


CPU
Ryzen 5 1500x


GPU
GTX 1050, nvidia-410.104


Game Saves
Automatically, though sometimes too infrequently


Notes
Painful to replay, no choices seem to matter except for the very end (where the change is just in your head anyway)


Technical Notes
A lot of interaction felt laggy

63 / 100
A slow burning yet fascinating story that I found hindered by the chop-n-change nature of the storytelling. First half of the game was hard to follow, and was a struggle to motivate myself to continue playing at times. Once over that hump though, State of Mind came home strong leaving me thinking of the implications of my choices well after I pressed exit.
+ Feels Surreal, Dreamlike.
+ Voice acting is high quality & emotive.
+ Low-Poly graphical style was off-putting at first, but does give the game a unique feel.
+ Some great camera work puts you into the space & draws out details in the scene.
+ Rewarding story arcs.
- No real gameplay challenges outside of navigating the UI. Bit hollow.
- Worlds/Environments created look good, but lack any interaction or vibrancy.
- Gameplay in general feels padded out, going over same areas (like the apartment).
- Needed tighter narrative focus to help understand character motivations earlier.
- Poor engine performance in certain scenes (sub 30 frames on 1080TI).
- No manual save system. Had to redo several sections several times as a result.
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I have mixed feelings about State of Mind. However, I would recommend it with a few reservations.
On the positive side, the story is actually pretty good. I'd liken it to a mix of iRobot, Deus Ex, and Black Mirror all wrapped up into one. So for me (loving all of those), the story was a big win. The music, characters, and overall thematic elements are fantastic. Perhaps a bit cliche, but well done none-the-less.
With that said, there are two major downsides. First, this isn't really a "game", but rather more of an interactive story. Nothing wrong with that, but I was actually expecting a puzzle style game like other games from Daedelic, so it was a slight surprise. The controls are pretty bad as well, reminding me of a 90s style game.
But the biggest downside to State of Mind is its incredibly slow start. It BARELY kept my interest for the first 5 hours of so. That's saying a lot for me, since I really don't mind slower games, tv, or movies. But this was taking it to the next level in terms of dragging on the introduction to the characters. This aspect may be a deal breaker for many people, and based off of the achievement percentage that I saw, not many people have actually finished the game.
At any rate, if you like distopian sci-fi stories and aren't expecting much from the gameplay, State of Mind is a pretty good relaxing story that becomes very engaging once you have gotten past the arduous introduction.
(as a side note, my game time is not indicative of the time it takes to complete the game. I have a tendency to pause games for hours or even days at a time)

State of Mind is a Sci-Fi thriller game with beautiful polygon-style and a good story that kept me invested till the end.
Pros:
- Great artstyle, and it works really well with game's theme and story, love it
- Good OST, ranges from cyberpunk (obviously) to Sadcore
- Captivating story with interesting side characters and good plot twists along the way, makes you want to know more about the characters and the world
- Superb voice acting, as Daedalic Entertainment is known for that I suppose
- Well optimized, never crashed
- Good cyberpunk world with a dark tone and a realistic vision of the world
Cons:
- Even though I said the OST is good, there is one song that they keep playing on loop multiple times throughout the game (and the menu) and it was driving me crazy, hated that music.
- The first hour is somewhat boring, a lot of exposition , but after that the story picks up
- They could have just removed multiple sections of the game as they were redundant and didn't have an affect on the game whatsoever, just an excuse to make the game longer I suppose
- The protagonist is somewhat of a dick sometimes, as there were certain choice that you had to pick between that makes you look like an asshole eitherway, but I am pretty sure that was intentional at the start of the game
In the end, the game took me about 10 hours to complete and I really enjoyed it, despite the cons.
verdict: 8/10
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